Debt of Honor

A Jack Ryan Novel

By: Tom Clancy

Narrated by: John MacDonald

Clancy plunges hero Jack Ryan into nonstop high adventure, as two seemingly unrelated occurrences being a chain of events that will stun the world.

Critic reviews

Praise for Debt of Honor

“A heart-stopping climax.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Breathtaking.”—Los Angeles Times

“[A] crackling good read.”—The Washington Times

More Praise for Tom Clancy

“He constantly taps the current world situation for its imminent dangers and spins them into an engrossing tale.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A brilliant describer of events.”—The Washington Post

“No one can equal his talent for making military electronics and engineering intelligible and exciting...He remains the best!”—Houston Chronicle

Another Tom Clancy Great!

Any additional comments?

For all of those complaining about the narrator, try listening at 1.5x. It sounds much more natural.

Really a pretty good story - HORRIBLE narrator!!

the story it's self was pretty good. Not the best Jack Ryan story but interesting and suspenseful. A little predictivable at times but I enjoyed it.

The problem is the narrator. So robotic!! Sounded like he was from the old text to talk program. I had to speed it up to 1.4X to get something that sounded like a human. Need a new narrator for this good!

One of Clancy's Best

What was one of the most memorable moments of Debt of Honor?

There are so many moving parts in this novel that it would be so easy for a less-skilled author to fumble, but Clancy does an expert job of building a wonderful tale with them, never skipping a beat. As you'd expect from Clancy, Debt is a political action-thriller through and through, but it crosses into so many different areas and walks of life - not just what he has become known for in previous novels.

This book continues into the immediate sequel, Executive Orders, which is also excellent. Be advised that you really can't read one without the other. Some may consider that a negative, and Executive Orders is (in my opinion) Clancy's harshest and maybe most difficult to read/listen to for some audiences, but still very much worth it.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

I typically listen to audiobooks at x1.25 speed, but immediately found this book didn't lend itself to that - a first in over 70 books. MacDonald's "narrator" monotone was disconcerting - it almost sounded like like a computer synthesizer. I was quite sure I didn't like it and that the next ~36 hours was going to be difficult, but it quickly got better once he started doing character voices. Not sure if he was just getting his bearings at the opening, or not, but by hour #2, MacDonald is doing a good job, with a better-than-average range of accents.

Any additional comments?

I read the book when it first came out, and thought of coming back to it for a second time more than once - it's good enough to be revisited later. When I saw that the abridged version was only 1/6 the length (6 vs. 36), I was quite shocked. Yes, the full version is longer than many audiobooks, and yes, even I - knowing what was coming - wanted to get to the meat of the story as quickly as possible. But this listener's recommendation to you is to go for the unabridged version - you'd miss out on so much good story. 30 hours to be exact =)

Another GREAT book

A great listen. One that makes you want to stay in the car :). Clancy always has a great story line and this one is great one.

Great book

I’m a big fan of the jack Ryan series, this book keeps you on edge!